Human trafficking in Zimbabwe

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In 2019 Zimbabwe was a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Large scale migration of Zimbabweans to surrounding countries - as they fled a progressively more desperate situation at home - increased, and NGOs, international organizations, and governments in neighboring countries reported an upsurge in these Zimbabweans facing conditions of exploitation, including human trafficking. Rural Zimbabwean men, women, and children were trafficked internally to farms for agricultural labor and domestic servitude and to cities for domestic labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Women and children were trafficked for domestic labor and sexual exploitation, including in brothels, along both sides of the borders with Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zambia. Young men and boys were trafficked to South Africa for farm work, often laboring for months in South Africa without pay before "employers" have them arrested and deported as illegal immigrants. Young women and girls were lured to South Africa, the People's Republic of China, Egypt, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada with false employment offers that result in involuntary domestic servitude or commercial sexual exploitation. Men, women, and children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia were trafficked through Zimbabwe en route to South Africa. Small numbers of South African girls were trafficked to Zimbabwe for domestic servitude.^[1] The government’s efforts to address trafficking at home have increased with the introduction of the National Action Plan (NAP) as well as the 2014 Trafficking in Persons Act.^[2] In addition, the trafficking situation in the country is worsening as more of the population is made vulnerable by declining socio-economic conditions.

The country ratified the 2000 UN TIP Protocol in December 2013.^[3]

U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed Zimbabwe in "Tier 2" in 2019^[1] and 2023.^[4]

In 2023, the Organised Crime Index gave the country a score of 5.50 out of 10 for human trafficking, noting that the worsening economic situation had led to increasing numbers of people being trafficked, especially to work in mines and construction. ^[5]